hi all, i just bought a 1990 accord lx with a 5 speed transmission. i had a wildly fluctuating idle causing car to die almost everytime i came to a stop light. after doing research on the web i though i fix it myself... heres what ive done....
bought a used iacv from ebay that was supposedly tested and was good. this fix however did nothing...
so i took it to a mechanic friend he said it had a miss, tested the distrubter said it was bad, so we put a new distrubter, plugs, wires and then reset the ecu. this helped stablize my idle some but did very little, it still died, still idle reved up and down during warm up.
so then i read about the fiv, i took it off cleaned it good and put it back on and presto, my reving problem during warm up was fixed along with my flucting idle... however it still died on me whenever i ran the a/c. or even sometimes when i turned the steering wheel or braked or even released the clutch the rpms tank. so to curb this problem i adjusted the throttle cable so it idle higher, so i could atleast drive it without stalls.

my question is this where do i go from here?

 

What rpm was the car idling before you adjusted the throttle cable?

Have you checked for engine codes?

 

no check engine light, but i havent checked for codes. it was idleing about 800 or so warm with no a/c or anything on

 

I don't know 1990 very well, but the throttle cable is almost certainly not a good place to adjust the idle. Use the idle-air screw (#1 in the picture).



Check out this thread:
https://www.hondaaccordforum.com/for...e-speed-38734/

Your year has a boost-valve (#9) and I'm not sure what if anything you have to do with that during idle-adjustment.

 

Let us know about the codes. When the engine is cold, check that the radiator is full of coolant.

For the next step, I would put back in your original IACV. There should be two coolant hoses going to it. I would clean the coolant passages on your IACV. Remove the two hoses one at a time, then clean the whole hose. If you still have the stalling problem with the original IACV, then we can assume something else is the culprit.

 

thx for the suggestions i'll check that out and let u know

 

I have acquired a 93 accord and the RPms fluctuate during startup 2 then 3 thousand, up and down as if someone ... the previous owner was gonna scrap the car, said it ran the battery was dead, low on coolant, no engine light.....From reading around here this is a common problem with this year models.....I need a little help
Not very familiar with Honda motors...Capprob mentioned "the fiv"...what and where is this?

Went out to clean things up a bit ...started the car, went to 3 grand then slowly went down to 2 after a short while...no up and down reving....maybe the computer needed to "re-learn" since it was dead for so long.....

 

I look into setting the base idle....should be around 750 (+/- 50), after filling and blleding the coolant....also, if it is low- Why?

 

The coolant was low because it sat for a LOOONG time....If I start the car now...the idle will go to 2 thou then slowly return to 750-1000, after the car "warms up"...the reving I was speaking about was actually from 1500-2000...It did it again yesterday, but that was after I removed the battery for a couple of hours to clean things up.
Also both fans came on after a while....seemed normal, then shut off shortly. It did it twice but then the temp read Hot....Poss, temp sending unit or thermostat?

 

We all read things differently.

What you describe on start up sounds normal 1500~2000 and then goes down to ~750.

The idle bouncing really sounds like a low coolant issue/trapped air or a dirty/slow IAC.

But then add the fans come on while running but temp goes hot...I'm back to low coolant or trapped air. Please double check the coolant and bleed the air-follow the procedure (heater set to heat and all of that good stuff)

Now this could be more than one issue-air, IAC and a sticking t-stat. Now t-stats are kind of cheap so you could replace that just to rule it out, but you'll def need to bleed the air from the coolant after doing that.